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I'm Fei Fei, together with Steve Hathaway and Niu Honglin in the studio.
Coming up, Across China.
Parents are finding themselves standing outside of their children's schools in vests, directing traffic, managing crowds.
But with no training, no legal authority and often no real choice.
What began as a voluntary initiative to protect kids has quietly become a mandatory duty.
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Now let's dive into the world of the voluntary trap.
As a parent, you've just finished a full day of work, but instead of going home, you now need to stand outside of your child's school in the cold, wearing a vest, trying to manage the traffic.
You have no training about this.
There is no legal authority.
And if you don't show up, you worry your child might be treated differently in class.
And this is the reality for many parents across China, where a school safety program that began as a voluntary initiative has turned into a mandatory duty.
The system was meant to protect children, but somehow along the way it began to hurt the very family we're supposed to support.
So today, let's talk about this system, the parent school guard system in China.
What exactly is that?
I have to say, it's not something that has been there for forever.
Because when I was a little girl, I used to go to school by bicycle.
Oh, same as me.
Right?
Still with my parents ever since... primary school.
But even when I was not able to ride a bike, it was my parents who ride me there instead of drive me there.
So I think this situation or this problem start to exist when private cars are being more and more common in China.
You can imagine hundreds of primary school students in their private cars being sent to school by their parents.
And that would cause a traffic jam.
That would put risk in the front gate area of the primary school if it's done in a wrong way.
Yeah.
So this is the, let's paint a picture here.
So you have the front entrance area of a school and you have all of these parents dropping their kids off around what like 730.
Or picking them up.
Yeah, twice a day, right?
So you've got all these cars pulling up at the same time.
So this is quite disorganized, or at least it can be, right?
For two different reasons.
Number one, because of the number of cars.
And number two, because of the number of kids getting out of those cars.
And also they might run around a little bit.
Yes, exactly.
So what you need is you need some security guards there.
To make sure that the kids are getting into school.
Now, when I say security guard, I'm not talking about someone with a gun in a holster.
I'm talking about, like oftentimes, volunteers who will just make sure that they're funneling the kids into the school, make sure everyone's staying safe and getting those cars out of there.
Move along, Hong Kong, move along.
Yeah.
So the idea at the very beginning was to form kind of like a team of police officers, school staff, security personnel and volunteer parents and helping, guiding the cars and guiding the kids to the right places.
This was a nationwide thing, right?
It is a nationwide thing, but it started as a successful local example, a local experiment.
Apparently, they're calling it the Ningbo Method in 2011, because this smart families and smart parents and also people working in schools find a good way.
That is having parents um standing or stop their vehicles about 10 meters away from the school gate, so creating this vacant space, and we have parent volunteers walked the kids the rest of the way, so that this small change actually dramatically reduced the traffic congestion at the entrance area during peak hours.
It's like the drop-off area at the airport.
You can't park here.
Don't park and go into the airport.
No.
Don't park and go into the school.
No.
Move along.
Keep going.
It's a drop and go kind of flow created by voluntary parents.
Because if you think about it, it's quite smart.
You're already dropping your kids off or picking them up.
You're already there.
And all you need to do is, once upon a time, be the one who's outside of the car and guiding kids a little bit, instead of, you know, in the car.
Drop and go.
Okay.
So, so far, this sounds wonderful.
So far.
Everybody's happy.
But then at some point, people became not so happy about this.
Somehow, I think, along the way, this kind of we call them 护学岗 parent school guard, start to feel like a mandatory duty to a lot of parents.
And that's shifting from being a volunteer to a mandatory duty.
That really put a lot of pressures on the parents themselves.
Because, if you really think about it, the problem only exists because of the improvement of social living status of different families and with the development of society and better city designing.
The situation does not exist in each and every school.
And yet when the Ningbo Method Being proved to be successful, being pushed and also introduced to different places, those places that do not necessarily need these kind of method to solve the non-existing problems.
You use it because it sounds like a good way to introduce parents to school life as well.
And also by shifting a little bit of responsibility there the safety responsibility of kids to parents, they can ensure no such complaints would happen as much.
And that's when parents start to report, feeling that they cannot refuse these kind of voluntary job, no matter whether or not it's needed in their specific school, because if they do not volunteer, they fear that their kids would be treated differently.
Well, it's not just that.
From what I understand, schools actually started assigning shifts.
Yeah, when you're volunteering, you stand in a line and you're the second to help or the third to help.
I think for many parents, obviously this does not work refer to me in any sense at all but i'm guessing that a lot of parents started to feel like this is a job on some level.
Yeah right, you need to show up and there's a rotation there to tell you it's an expectation.
And i think, too that probably the problem was that yeah, you mentioned it If the school, if it's not really necessary, why am I doing this?
Why am I being assigned to do this?
But that also, not every parent's schedule is the same.
So for some parents, volunteering their time in the morning or in the afternoon might be a very comfortable thing to do.
And you know, when it's here in China...
Another thing might happen.
That is for parents who do not really pick up their kids by car.
They do not go.
Sometimes the responsibility are transferred to the grandparents.
So the 70-year-old grandma standing in the cold.
As a guard.
In the winter.
She's not going to like that.
And also there have been services like parents can pay people to show up to sort of do that duty on their behalf.
And they can, you know, the service can be priced.
The price can be ranging from 50 yuan to even several hundred yuan per shift.
And I think I have one person reported that she or he earned 3000 around that per semester.
That's a good sidekick for doing this.
And there's also problem because even if we're talking about the kind of loving parents guiding little kids to the right direction, Still it's a kind of guard.
So in real emergency situations they do not have the training, proper training or knowledge to help the traffic do the right thing.
They do not really know how to protect a huge amount of kids.
I don't think that. qualifications is the main issue here, right?
But there might be legal ambiguity.
If something really happened, who should shoulder the responsibility as a voluntary parent?
Should you also shoulder part of the responsibility if a traffic accident really happened?
I mean, for insurance purposes, you might have a really fair point, actually.
But let's talk about the sandwich generation again.
They don't have the time and energy.
The man or woman who has their kids but they also have their elderly parents at home.
So this parent wakes up in the morning and has to prepare themselves to leave the house and go to their workplace.
But before that, they have to prepare their kids.
They might have to take care of their parents a little bit.
And then they've got to take their kids there.
But wait, you've got to stay here because you've got to play the role of crossing guard or whatever for a period of time.
And then, oh, not in the morning today.
Oh, you need me here at 3 p.m.?
?
Oh, well, I've got a meeting at 3.30.
How am I going to get to the school and then get... Wait, I'm going to lose my parking space.
That parking space is hard to get in the morning.
Where am I going to park when I come back to the company?
You're giving me a headache already.
So think about how much of a pain in the butt...
This would be for a lot, a lot, a lot of parents.
And after a day like that, we ask ourselves, it's 2026.
I'm worrying about AI taking my job, because that's how advanced technology is, yet I have to be part of a human wall to protect my kid.
Is it really, really necessary?
Question though, as parents, you probably feel more comfortable with this system in place, right?
You probably don't want to do it yourselves.
But you want somebody to do it, don't you?
Unless there can be a better system.
Robots can be a good one to start with.
And also better design in front of the school gate area.
And also different places are already trying to roll out different systems.
We see that in Xiuquan County All local authorities have built a professional defense line compared to parents, parents car parents vehicle, whatever.
If I'm looking at during peak hours, I am looking at a police vehicles and police lights.
They are visibly present at key school gate areas.
They also trained a volunteer police force to assist with traffic management.
That's better than unprofessional parents or even grandparents.
So that could be one way to make the situation better.
And I think, on city planning level I think, for example, putting in place physical fencing offer better signage.
Having a designated areas, for example, for parents to park for like two minutes.
It would help a lot when a lot of parents go into this guard position knowing nothing, knowing exactly.
I don't know what to do on this guard duty.
What do you need?
Hold on.
I mean, it's not that complicated.
Maybe it is.
Is it that complicated?
We do this in Canada and America, too, sometimes.
I've seen it in Hollywood dramas.
But from what I've seen, it's quite casual.
You're not on the SWAT team.
I think it depends on the location of the school.
If the school is located near a main road, think about all the congestion that the parents that are trying to drop off the students and all the other vehicles trying to go to work through the same road and a parent knowing nothing to do, having no legal authority no one will ever listen to that parent anyway trying to tell some of the vehicles, you need to go that direction.
Do you get a whistle?
I don't think so.
Different schools might have different equipment provided.
We're only talking about this from the parents point of view, but there's also the teachers in the schools, right?
They have a side in this and they want.
They have their own reasons that they want this.
Teachers, for example, they're kind of stuck in the middle, i guess, because think about this angle.
So you're the teacher of a grade four homeroom class and you know, oh gosh, i've gotta text the parents today and tell them to be here tomorrow morning.
I'm gonna get yelled at.
They don't want to be here.
But I'm also going to get a text from the principal of the school saying did you text the parents yet and confirm that they will be here tomorrow morning.
Plus you have to grade their homework.
Plus you have to prepare your lessons for tomorrow.
And then you got to deal with this.
They're stuck in the middle.
This is tough.
So this system, this parent school guard duty, has become something that the teachers do not want anymore.
And the parents do not want to do anymore.
I'm wondering how would the school respond when neither party two parties of this system is sort of rejecting this position at the moment?
Well, I believe this is not rocket science kind of problem.
You can solve it. by looking at the real situation of the school.
I think people are reasonable.
If my kid is going to a school in city center area and if the gate has to be on a main avenue.
And if my kid is going to a school that is in the city center and the school gate has to open on a main avenue, where half of the traffic on that avenue is not for the purpose of picking up kids during peak hours.
Another great point.
Yeah.
If that is the situation and the school says yes, we do not have enough volunteers for the safety of your kids, would you find some time in your i don't know in one semester and be a volunteer?
Of course i would agree to that.
But if the situation is not really that necessary, i think parents as well as teachers would have the basic ability to judge the situation case by case and find better ways, contribute to the situation and just make sure that no one is suffering.
We don't need a nationwide blanket program.
But as a parent myself, I didn't really see this kind of voluntary tasks assigned by schools as burden per se, simply because for one
I don't get a lot of a chance to see what sort of school life my kid has in the school.
So when I... You've never been asked to do this?
I'm asked to do this like twice a semester.
So I think that's fine.
And also I'd love to join because I get to visit her classroom, you know, see her lunchtime.
Are you talking about the same kind of duty or some other kind of school visiting days?
It made me thinking about it.
Similar to this parent school guard duty, we also have other volunteer duties that parents need to do throughout the semester at school.
Such as?
Such as, you know, for example, the school is organizing an art festival.
And they normally would ask parents to volunteer to fill in some positions, for example for makeup, for photography, for just organizing large crowds of students on campus.
And we just love that opportunity.
You need to compete for a position like that.
So I think maybe there is also the good side to this kind of volunteer job on campus.
Get to visit your children at the school in person to see how the school is run.
But maybe this parent guard system is not a really good example because it's not, as you said, designed a case-by-case system but more of a nationwide uh, blanket system.
And that is why we're not saying no to all of the schools who are saying ah, we need some parent volunteers.
We're just saying, for those who don't really need those positions, stop pointing at those positions.
And at the same time, I'm actually curious because I am a mother of a really young kid.
My kid is not enrolled in primary school or anything just yet.
I'm curious whether or not there are things like a parents committee or something helping parents Like the majority of the parents communicate with the school, because I have seen these things in TV dramas or something.
The parent committee president or someone would – represent the entire parents and raise some kind of request.
So usually the way they portray it in the dramas is that you have these like parent groups and some of the like.
The leader of the group wants to be like super involved in everything.
Yeah. and is really hyper and excited about all the little tiny projects.
And then you've got the parent who's like, yeah, whatever.
I don't really want to join.
And then that parent can get ostracized by the really go-getter moms in the group.
Because they feel like, oh, you never want to volunteer your time.
Usually in the dramas, that's how they portray it.
I don't know if that's accurate or not, but I can imagine it being at least a little bit accurate.
I'm not really sure about elsewhere in the world, but at least here in Beijing, at least a position in the parent committee can be very competitive.
Oh, really?
Because they only need like a handful of parents.
But of course there are parents who don't really want to join this committee because maybe they have a really tight work schedule.
It is exactly the same as the dramas.
Yeah, yeah.
And there are parents who are actively trying to pitch in on every task that the teacher needs help in.
And actively trying to escape every task that the teacher has.
So we're looking at a very polarized situation in the parent committee position.
But anyhow, I think you know this is They are advocating for parent and school cooperation for a better education for your kids, because it's not only happening at schools, but also in families.
But we just need a better and detailed design when it comes to how we design, how we detail this kind of cooperation between parents and schools.
And that's all the time we've got for today's Roundtable.
Thanks Hongling and Steve for joining the show.
And thank you for tuning in.
Remember, you can find us on your podcast platform by searching Roundtable China.
I'm Fei Fei, and I'll see you next time.
